2014-09-10

Time has been flying! I didn’t find the time to write a summary about the best three months of my life. It was too much things to handle before leaving. I also wanted distance to my adventure so I could catch a better view. This three months has been extremely exciting. I have never felt this free and alive before. It’s incredible what you actually can do if you really, really want it!

Below you can read about my journey three best parts, and what I valued the most:

Work, I’ve got a brighter understanding how to use my new methods and tools in different situations. It’s quite fascinating that you can be aware of your own actions and your own behavior. How you can analyze and build up yourself and also focus on what you think is most important. I was often asking my supervisor about personal feedback in different situations. Because sometimes you can be quite hard on yourself and only see the “bad things” you do and forget about the good once. Of course it can also be in the opposite way, then it’s even harder to develop yourself in personal actions, because you have to be a bit critical to actually manage.

The most powerful lesson I had during this trip has been; how to handle people in different situations in the business world and also people around it. If you think about it, It’s stuff that you have to go through. You have to experience it to understand how you will act in all these new situations that you put yourself through every day. there is no book that will tell you how you will act…

What about the business itself? Yeah, I learned how to check production, how to put meetings, how to source material for our customers etc. Of course I put together everything I learned from school and previous experience together with my new once to get a greater use for better result at work.

When you learned the basics of your main routines you’re starting to realize that it’s not that easy as you thought. Because every situation with maybe different people in different mood can, or will, change your whole agenda. One day does not look like the other.

So this has been a very good experiment on myself because I am a person who love to plan my day. I love when things goes smooth. I love to have control. So, This job has been the opposite of what I’m use to. At first I was frustrated and not really satisfied because I couldn’t really change my schedule in a smooth way. After maybe 6 weeks I figured out that it was actually me who had to change my way of thinking. Always cary a back up plan with me and practice on “quick-solution-thinking”.

My collection for my future brand. Between meetings and during my free days I have been seeking after the right trimmings and fabric for my garments. I have to say; people who works with textile and trimmings they are such nice people. It’s a pleasure to work and be in this world of textile!

I started to sketch up what I had in mind, i’m always quite sure about what I want to make. So I was sketching then I made patterns (size 36) and after that I did my prototypes with white cotton wave. And I drew sharp lines so I could easily see how the garment is shaped to the body. Normally you make prototypes in size medium to grade your sizes afterwards. But I will no grade them, that’s why.

When I made my prototypes I started to make the real patterns including lining so I could easily calculate fabric consumption per garment.

After these steps I kind of new how much fabric I needed each garment and my fabric and trimming hunt started!

It has been a little bit tricky because most fabric supplier don’t want to sell under 100 meters. I only wanted ten m/fabric, so they were laughing a bit, but after a few negative answers I found another way to express my needs and they also changed their behavior towards me. I found what I was searching for an a lot more!

I also got my hang tags and neck labels to a factory that could help me. So I’m enormously pleased with my effort of my own dream.

My new friends, who are full of energy and love! I feel so lucky to have been surrounded by their kindness and craziness. It has been so manny nights that I never wanted to end.

Facebook had this amazing site ”svenskar i Istanbul” (English = Swedes in Istanbul) where you can join and see what’s happening in the city. You can also write by yourself and suggest events. I new some people from Istanbul since before and they also led me into new friendships. There is also coffee shops that swedish people owns and you can easily find swedes there. After a while you get friends from all over the world and you will get this amazing feeling that you just wanna stay in this world forever.

I hope I did manage to give you some advice and knowledge about my work. If you want to ask questions feel free to catch me at school or e-mail. If you didn’t follow, the blog posts before, I study at the swedish school of textile in Borås, Textile Product Development and Entrepreneurship, second year.